JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

Here are some doodles of a cat… a character that will get its own mini comic some day.

I am slowly hacking my way out of the dark forest of Multilateral Hardware Malfunctions, which is where I have been wandering, frightened and alone, for the past few weeks.

My lap top is back in working order and, though not as fast as it once was, it at least runs again, and it appears that all the data has been retrieved. I still haven’t given up hope that all the EXTRA data, that only exists on my Back-up Hard-drive, can also somehow be dug out of the murk of ones and zeroes… It is on the operating table this week, so fingers crossed.

This is a sketch I did during this year’s APE show. Rafael Navarro has been keeping a CAPTAIN AMERICA sketchbook where he asks other people to draw his favourite super-hero, and this was my contribution. In retrospect, I should have drawn Captain America with Barack Obama’s face!

In celebration of all the glory that is the San Diego COMIC CON, here are some sketches of Con denizens that I drew a few years back…

This sketch of my buddy Dave Gordon, was done around 10 years ago when He, I and mutual friend Tony Stacchi all visited Paris. I just found some photos and sketches from that trip when I was sorting through some boxes of old stuff.

I have been on a scanning and archiving kick lately, organising old photos and drawings. The recent round of activity was inspired when I received some boxes I had sent myself when I was in Australia last Christmas.

I had helped my father move into a new house and along the way I was obliged to sort through several boxes of my old junk that I had left at his house all these many years that I have lived abroad. I threw a lot of it away but mailed the rest to myself here in San Francisco. It was sent SEA MAIL so it took quite a while to arrive.

The box contains some stuff sent home to Australia during my travelling years plus some of my childhood drawings and other things that I may post here later.

Here is another picture from my spare time project about a dog from outer space. This image is from one of the later books, where he returns in a fancy spaceship to visit the friends he made on Earth in his first adventure when he crash landed. You can see him here cloaking his space ship, which is parked above the rooftop of an apartment building that has a view very much like the view from the roof of the building where I live right now.

Another of the sketches for the characters I posted earlier here and here.

Here is another bit of professional work done on a project that went into hibernation. It is an exploration for an easy-to-draw futuristic flight suit. Although the colours I had in mind were black, grey and purple, I hoped that it might look a bit skeletal when worn.

A few years ago I was given the chance to design my version of a certain martial arts bear that is currently entertaining audiences in movie theatres across the land. The job was only for two or three days, just until the creative team came to their senses and used the supernaturally talented designer who was already working at that studio (there is a certain sense of satisfaction in knowing that my lameness was instrumental in pushing them in the right direction). In the short time available, I only got as far as a few pages of scribbles, but this Big Baby version is one of my favourites of the several variations I came up with.

If you haven’t seen this movie yet, by all means hurry out and see it soon. I think that it is one of the best animated movies in years. It is gorgeous to look at and beautifully animated with some of the best action sequences I’ve seen in any movie lately; fast paced, kinetic and cutty without ever being confusing… The story is funny without being flippant or snide, or drenched in pop-culture wise-ass-ery. Plus, it really delivers some pure, sweet moments that aren’t saccharine, which is one of the hardest things to do in any movie.

Here is my take on “the baddie” in a project I worked on recently. The job died almost as soon as I delivered the artwork… which was a bunch of character studies; both B/W sketches and a few colour pics like this one. 90% of such jobs tend to die on the operating table.

This is my contribution to an upcoming charity art auction. It was done with Prisma Colour and Aquarelle pencils on toned pastel paper. I was happy with the sketch, but unfortunately, the rendering in the final piece didn’t come out quite as well as I’d hoped. It is a little overworked… but I ran out of time, so it is what it is…